We begin this week with a nifty fundraising idea courtesy of Ken Davenport at the Producer's Perspective. He has been thinking about "crowd funding". This is the process of raising money by getting large numbers of people to each give small amounts of money rather than simply relying on a few wealthy donors. It was a process used famously by Barack Obama's election campaign, and Davenport has been trying to find a way of applying it to producing on Broadway.

With his new production of Godspell he seems to have succeeded, and is now offering punters the chance to invest in the show. "Godspell is the perfect show for this concept," argues Davenport. "As Stephen Schwartz said to me, 'Godspell is essentially about a community of people coming together.' It just makes sense to bring together the largest community of producers ever to mount this historic 40th anniversary production." In return for a minimum investment of $1,000 (around £640) – as opposed to the usual minimum of $50,000 or $100,000 – individuals will be credited both on the poster outside the theatre and on the newly-created website. And of course, if the show turns a profit, they might even make some cash.

The Playgoer is intrigued by this idea. The blogger points out that by billing each and every donor as "producer" Davenport threatens to "exacerbate the current 'above-the-title' producer clusterfucks that already mar every Playbill and Tony night". The Playgoer admits, however, that it's still a "small price to pay, I think, for a worthy experiment", and goes on to wonder if it would be possible to create "a small … company truly owned and financed by a community of theatregoers".

In response to this, Isaac Butler rightly points out the problem with Davenport's scheme: "You still have to pony up at least $1,000. The shares still have a fixed price. Crowd funding in part relies on the funder determining the amount that they provide." Yet it is surely possible that this could be done without such a large initial investment being required. It will be good to keep an eye on how Davenport's show progresses.

Natalie Wheen at the Arts Desk has an in-depth report about the organisation's attitude towards the rights of its artists. Usually, a designer or director would retain the copyright of the work they create. However, "it has come as a shock to the entire theatrical design community to find that the Royal Opera House appears to have a drawn up a new contract for any new commission which will attack this core principle, which is the basis of English and European copyright law. The ROH is demanding that its entire stable of creative talent … sign over to the Royal Opera House all their copyright in their work there — in perpetuity."

The opera house claims that one of the reasons for this is because they are "heavily funded by the public purse, [so] it isn't right that artists should be free to exploit their copyright for their own benefit, with the ROH only having limited rights". This is a remarkable claim, however. Artist development is a key focus for the Arts Council and it is very hard to see how removing artists' right to control their material could be construed as being in the public interest.

Finally, given recent discussions about the role and nature of theatre criticism it is worth taking a look at Tassos Stevens's blog where he is exploring "attribution theory". This, he says, is all "about how and where you attribute the cause of a situation/phenomenon. Crudely speaking, there's a difference between the default locus of attribution in being a participant and a spectator. A participant will tend to attribute to the situation. A footballer slips and misses a penalty and they'll blame the pitch. A spectator will tend to attribute personally: what a rubbish player." This also pertains to art, he argues: "Faced with art challenging beyond their experience, a conventional critic has to resist the temptation to attribute to the artist labels like willful, self-indulgent etc. If they are to be a useful critic." In other words, if a critic does not understand what an artist is trying to do, they might want to first interrogate the framework within which they are making that judgment before just assuming the artist in question is incompetent.